CHALLENGES of AMBIGUITY Doing Comparative History With
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Early Modern Japan
December 1995 Early Modern Japan KarenWigen) Duke University The aims of this paperare threefold: (I) to considerwhat Westernhistorians mean when they speakof Early Modern Japan,(2) to proposethat we reconceivethis period from the perspectiveof world networks history, and (3) to lay out someof the advantagesI believe this offers for thinking aboutSengoku and Tokugawasociety. The idea that Japan had an early modern period is gradually becoming common in every sector of our field, from institutional to intellectual history. Yet what that means has rarely been discussed until now, even in the minimal sense of determining its temporal boundaries: I want to thank David Howell and James Ketelaar for raising the issue in this forum, prompting what I hope will become an ongoing conversation about our periodization practices. To my knowledge, the sole attempt in English to trace the intellectual genealogy of this concept is John Hall's introduction to the fourth volume of the Cambridge History of Japan-a volume that he chose to title Early Modern Japan. Hall dates this expression to the 1960s, when "the main concern of Western scholars of the Edo period was directed toward explaining Japan's rapid modernization." Its ascendancy was heralded by the 1968 publication of Studies in the Institutional History of Early Modern Japan, which Hall co-edited with Marius Jansen. "By declaring that the Tokugawa period should be called Japan's 'early modern' age," he reflects, "this volume challenged the common practice of assuming that Japan during the Edo period was still fundamentally feudal.") Although Hall sees the modernization paradigm as having been superseded in later decades, he nonetheless reads the continuing popularity of the early modern designation as a sign that most Western historians today see the Edo era as "more modern than feudal.',4 This notion is reiterated in even more pointed terms by Wakita Osamu in the same volume. -
Comparative Thinking Ph.D
Comparative Thinking Ph.D. - seminar in Sociology/Anthropology 4 credits Fall 2012 Judit Bodnar [email protected] ‘Thinking without comparison is unthinkable.’ Yet the comparative method has become something distinctive, and comparative history, politics, government, literature as well as comparative-historical sociology have been institutionalized as separate fields. The course explores these explicit comparative strategies in the social sciences and the humanities. It, however, goes beyond that and handles comparison as a cultural system. The course scrutinizes the cultural embeddedness of the logic and categories of comparison, the location of ‘universal’ social theory as well as issues pertaining to hegemony, ideology and knowledge. Globalization has produced an awareness of intertwined histories and social conditions, and a new configuration of similarity and difference that challenge social research and comparative thinking. This will receive special attention in class. Readings are of two types: (1) texts on comparative strategies and (2) examples of comparative research. The purpose of the class is to enhance your critical skills and help you develop a constructive, theoretically and practically viable approach to your dissertation research. You are required --to come to class prepared, (cca. 30% of your grade) --to prepare a few critical summaries of the readings that are to initiate discussion in class (on a rotating basis), (30% of your grade) --to devise a comparative research design based on the approaches discussed in class, preferably along the lines of your dissertation research. This is the term paper to be submitted shortly after the end of classes. (40% of the grade) Week 1 Introduction Part 1 The comparative method Week 2 Macrosocial comparisons in historical studies Charles Ragin. -
The German Revolution of 1848–491 Is Mostly Associated with the Barricade Fights in Berlin and Vienna and the Uprising in Baden
Вестник СПбГУ. История. 2017. Т. 62. Вып. 3 F. Moeller THE GERMAN REVOLUTION OF 1848–1849 — NEW PERSPECTIVES The article examines the special character of the revolution of 1848/49 in Germany. The focus lies on the perspective of contemporaries to the events. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Pe- riod were the defining, mostly negative, experiences for the generations who were active in 1848. The ideas of 1848 arose in a pre-industrial, harmony-oriented civil society. The constitution demanded in 1848 was therefore not aimed at the legalization of a modern division of state and society, but it wanted a state-formation at the national level based on the idea of the Aristotelian societas civilis. The numer- ous conflicts of the revolution, social and national conflicts, and even the political division into demo- crats and liberals, were not weaknesses of the revolution. It was rather the lack of readiness for conflict which led to the failure of the revolution. From the point of view of the contemporaries the revolution failed, but the modernizing impulses of the revolution went on to shape further development. Refs 25. Keywords: German Revolution 1848–1849, civil society, liberalism, modernization. For citation: Moeller F. The German revolution of 1848–1849 — new perspectives. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. History, 2017, vol. 62, issue 3, pp. 601–612. DOI: 10.21638/11701/ spbu02.2017.311 DOI: 10.21638/11701/spbu02.2017.311 Ф. Мюллер НЕМЕЦКАЯ РЕВОЛЮЦИЯ 1848–1849 — НОВЫЕ ПЕРСПЕКТИВЫ В статье рассматривается особый характер революции 1848–1849 гг. в Германии. Основ- ное внимание уделяется перспективам современников. -
The Rule of Law in European Jurisprudence
Strasbourg, 29 May 2009 CDL-DEM(2009)006* Study 512/2009 Eng.Only EUROPEAN COMMISSION FOR DEMOCRACY THROUGH LAW (VENICE COMMISSION) THE RULE OF LAW IN EUROPEAN JURISPRUDENCE by Mr Martin LOUGHLIN (Expert, United Kingdom) *This document has been classified restricted on the date of issue. Unless the Venice Commission decides otherwise, it will be declassified a year after its issue according to the rules set up in Resolution CM/Res(2001)6 on access to Council of Europe documents. This document will not be distributed at the meeting. Please bring this copy. www.venice.coe.int CDL-DEM(2009)006 - 2 - Modern constitutional development is driven by a dynamic between power and liberty: since the powers of government in the modern era are invariably extensive, it is accepted that, if the key political value of liberty is to be maintained, these powers must be confined, channelled and checked. This is the basic purpose underpinning modern written constitutions. Written constitutions exist to maintain a balance between the grant and institutionalization of governmental power and the preservation of the liberties of the individual. For this critical function of modern constitutions to be realized, three basic principles must be accepted. The first is that the constitution must be recognized to be the medium through which all governmental power is to be exercised; this is the principle of constitutional supremacy. The second principle is that the law of the constitution must be acknowledged as the fundamental law of the land. And the third is that, with the acceptance of constitutional law as fundamental law, the judiciary – as interpreters of constitutional law – must be accepted as being the institution that acts as the ultimate guardian of the constitution. -
German’ Communities from Eastern Europe at the End of the Second World War
EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE, FLORENCE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND CIVILIZATION EUI Working Paper HEC No. 2004/1 The Expulsion of the ‘German’ Communities from Eastern Europe at the End of the Second World War Edited by STEFFEN PRAUSER and ARFON REES BADIA FIESOLANA, SAN DOMENICO (FI) All rights reserved. No part of this paper may be reproduced in any form without permission of the author(s). © 2004 Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees and individual authors Published in Italy December 2004 European University Institute Badia Fiesolana I – 50016 San Domenico (FI) Italy www.iue.it Contents Introduction: Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees 1 Chapter 1: Piotr Pykel: The Expulsion of the Germans from Czechoslovakia 11 Chapter 2: Tomasz Kamusella: The Expulsion of the Population Categorized as ‘Germans' from the Post-1945 Poland 21 Chapter 3: Balázs Apor: The Expulsion of the German Speaking Population from Hungary 33 Chapter 4: Stanislav Sretenovic and Steffen Prauser: The “Expulsion” of the German Speaking Minority from Yugoslavia 47 Chapter 5: Markus Wien: The Germans in Romania – the Ambiguous Fate of a Minority 59 Chapter 6: Tillmann Tegeler: The Expulsion of the German Speakers from the Baltic Countries 71 Chapter 7: Luigi Cajani: School History Textbooks and Forced Population Displacements in Europe after the Second World War 81 Bibliography 91 EUI WP HEC 2004/1 Notes on the Contributors BALÁZS APOR, STEFFEN PRAUSER, PIOTR PYKEL, STANISLAV SRETENOVIC and MARKUS WIEN are researchers in the Department of History and Civilization, European University Institute, Florence. TILLMANN TEGELER is a postgraduate at Osteuropa-Institut Munich, Germany. Dr TOMASZ KAMUSELLA, is a lecturer in modern European history at Opole University, Opole, Poland. -
Domesticating the German East: Nazi Propaganda and Women's Roles in the “Germanization” of the Warthegau During World Wa
DOMESTICATING THE GERMAN EAST: NAZI PROPAGANDA AND WOMEN’S ROLES IN THE “GERMANIZATION” OF THE WARTHEGAU DURING WORLD WAR II Madeline James A thesis submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the History Department in the College of Arts and Sciences. Chapel Hill 2020 Approved by: Konrad Jarausch Karen Auerbach Karen Hagemann © 2020 Madeline James ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Madeline James: Domesticating the German East: Nazi Propaganda And Women’s Roles in the “Germanization” of the Warthegau during World War II (Under the direction of Konrad Jarausch and Karen Auerbach) This thesis utilizes Nazi women’s propaganda to explore the relationship between Nazi gender and racial ideology, particularly in relation to the Nazi Germanization program in the Warthegau during World War II. At the heart of this study is an examination of a paradox inherent in Nazi gender ideology, which simultaneously limited and expanded “Aryan” German women’s roles in the greater German community. Far from being “returned to the home” by the Nazis in 1933, German women experienced an expanded sphere of influence both within and beyond the borders of the Reich due to their social and cultural roles as “mothers of the nation.” As “bearers of German culture,” German women came to occupy a significant role in Nazi plans to create a new “German homeland” in Eastern Europe. This female role of “domesticating” the East, opposite the perceived “male” tasks of occupation, expulsion, and resettlement, entailed cultivating and reinforcing Germanness in the Volksdeutsche (ethnic German) communities, molding them into “future masters of the German East.” This thesis therefore also examines the ways in which Reich German women utilized the notion of a distinctly female cultural sphere to stake a claim in the Germanizing mission. -
Robert Von Mohl in Der Tradition Der Deutschen Staatswissenschaften
Entstehung einer modernen Erkenntnis der Staatspolitik Entstehung einer modernen Erkenntnis der Staatspolitik: Robert von Mohl in der Tradition der deutschen Staatswissenschaften VON Shuichiro Kimura Die politische Ökonomie als Wirtschaftswissenschaft im weiteren Sinne ist nicht nur darauf ausgerichtet, das Markt-System aufzuhellen, sondern muß notwendigerweise auch die Politik“, i. e. die Institutionali- ” sierung der revidierenden Wirkungen des Staates durch Gesetzgebung und Verwaltung gegen den ökonomischen Grundprozeß als unentbehrlichen Bestandteil umfassen.1 Als Adolph Wagner (1835-1917), Professor der Staatswissenschaften” an der Universität Berlin, das Hauptwerk seines ” verstorbenen Lehrers, Karl Heinrich Rau, der zur Verbreitung der Smith’- schen Wirtschaftslehre viel beigetragen hatte, 1876 von Grund auf neube- arbeitete, kritisierte er, Rau geht nirgends principiell auf die Betrach- ” tung des Staats aus dem volkswirthschaftlichen Gesichtspuncte ein“,2 und zeigte einen so weiten und freien Horizont, daß er die weitreichende Staatstätigkeit als Zwangsgemeinwirthschaft“ zur Befriedigung der Ge- ” ” meinbedürfnisse“ begriff. Für Wagner war die Volkswirthschaft keines- ” 1 Die folgende Studie ist eine Erweiterung des Manuskriptes des Verfassers für einen Bericht mit dem fast gleichen Titel auf der 70. Jahresversammlung der Gesellschaft für die Geschichte des wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Gedankens am 28. Mai 2006 zu Kanagawa Universität. 2 A. Wagner, Allgemeine oder theoretische Volkswirthschaftslehre, Mit Benut- zung von Rau’s -
By Ingo Haar
QUEST N. 17 – REVIEWS Cordelia Hess, The Absent Jews: Kurt Forstreuter and the Historiography of Medieval Prussia, (New York, Berghahn Books, 2017), pp. 323. by Ingo Haar In The Absent Jews, Cordelia Hess tackles a key topic in German history and writes about the connection between science and political power under National Socialism. For two decades now, research has been being conducted on the part that German historians played in the genocide of the European Jews and Slavic people in Eastern Europe, but here Hess focuses on the role played by archivists. As Raphael Lemkin, the father of the Genocide Convention, pointed out, the physical destruction of a nation or ethnic group is preceded by the removal of their cultural heritage. This finding is still unproven in Germany except for individual research on the looting of archives by Wolfgang Freund, Esther Abel and Anja Heuss and the genealogical research that Jürgen Schlumbohm works on. The key focus of this book by Cordelia Hess, medieval historian and chair of Nordic History at the University of Greifswald, is the Königsberg archivist and medievalist Kurt Forstreuter (1897–1979). As there is hardly any evidence for the presence of Jews in the area around the eastern Baltic in the Middle Ages, especially in the State of the Teutonic Order (Deutscher Orden), the region has long been considered as being without Jews. In her study, Cordelia Hess questions this thesis of the absence of Jews and investigates whether this is not rather the result of the destruction of Jewish sources during the Holocaust, an activity closely related to Forstreuter. -
The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry THEDA SKOCPOL and MARGARET SOMERS
The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry THEDA SKOCPOL AND MARGARET SOMERS Harvard University Comparative history is not new. As long as people have investigated social life, there has been recurrent fascination with juxtaposing historical pat- terns from two or more times or places. Part of the appeal comes from the general usefulness of looking at historical trajectories in order to study social change. Indeed, practitioners of comparative history from Alexis de Tocqueville and Max Weber to Marc Bloch, Reinhard Bendix, and Bar- rington Moore, Jr. have typically been concerned with understanding societal dynamics and epochal transformations of cultures and social structures. Attention to historical sequences is indispensable to such under- standing. Obviously, though, not all investigations of social change use explicit juxtapositions of distinct histories. We may wonder, therefore: What motivates the use of comparisons as opposed to focussing on single historical trajectories? What purposes are pursued—and how—through the specific modalities of comparative history? Certain areas of scholarly endeavor in contemporary social science have given rise to methodological reflection even more sophisticated than the substantive applications of the methods in question, but this has certainly not been the case for comparative history. Despite the steady application of variants of this approach to macrosocial topics such as revolutions, re- ligious evolution, political development, economic "modernization," pat- terns of collective violence, and the rise and fall of empires, there have been remarkably few efforts to explore the methodological aspects of compara- tive history as such in any systematic fashion.' What is more, the most An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Session on "Methods of Historical Sociology" at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Boston, Massa- chusetts, August 1979. -
CRITICAL SOCIAL HISTORY AS a TRANSATLANTIC ENTERPRISE, 1945-1989 Philipp Stelzel a Dissertatio
RETHINKING MODERN GERMAN HISTORY: CRITICAL SOCIAL HISTORY AS A TRANSATLANTIC ENTERPRISE, 1945-1989 Philipp Stelzel A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of the Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History Chapel Hill 2010 Approved by: Adviser: Dr. Konrad H. Jarausch Reader: Dr. Dirk Bönker Reader: Dr. Christopher Browning Reader: Dr. Karen Hagemann Reader: Dr. Donald Reid © 2010 Philipp Stelzel ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT PHILIPP STELZEL: Rethinking Modern German History: Critical Social History as a Transatlantic Enterprise, 1945-1989 (under the direction of Konrad H. Jarausch) My dissertation “Rethinking Modern German History: Critical Social History as a Transatlantic Enterprise, 1945-1989” analyzes the intellectual exchange between German and American historians from the end of World War II to the 1980s. Several factors fostered the development of this scholarly community: growing American interest in Germany (a result of both National Socialism and the Cold War); a small but increasingly influential cohort of émigré historians researching and teaching in the United States; and the appeal of American academia to West German historians of different generations, but primarily to those born between 1930 and 1940. Within this transatlantic intellectual community, I am particularly concerned with a group of West German social historians known as the “Bielefeld School” who proposed to re-conceptualize history as Historical Social Science (Historische Sozialwissenschaft). Adherents of Historical Social Science in the 1960s and early 1970s also strove for a critical analysis of the roots of National Socialism. Their challenge of the West German historical profession was therefore both interpretive and methodological. -
The Invention of Frederick the Great
University at Albany, State University of New York Scholars Archive History Honors Program History 2019 The Invention of Frederick the Great Matheson Curry University at Albany, State University of New York Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/history_honors Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Curry, Matheson, "The Invention of Frederick the Great" (2019). History Honors Program. 13. https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/history_honors/13 This Undergraduate Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the History at Scholars Archive. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Honors Program by an authorized administrator of Scholars Archive. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Invention of Frederick the Great By Matheson Curry An honors thesis presented to the Department of History, University at Albany, State University of New York in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in History. Advisors: Dr. Michitake Aso & Dr. Richard Fogarty 10 May 2019 Curry 1 Acknowledgements: I would like to thank my advisors, Dr. Aso and Dr. Fogarty of the University at Albany, for assisting me with this project as well as providing valuable feedback. I would also like to thank Dr. Charles Lansing at the University of Connecticut for additional feedback. Furthermore I want to thank Jesus Alonso-Regalado and other staff of the University at Albany Library for helping me locate critical sources. Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family for not only supporting me throughout this project but also providing peer edits: in particular I would like to thank Hannah Breda, Cassidy Griffin, Carlee Litt, and Alexander McKenna. -
Königsberg–Kaliningrad, 1928-1948
Exclave: Politics, Ideology, and Everyday Life in Königsberg–Kaliningrad, 1928-1948 By Nicole M. Eaton A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Yuri Slezkine, chair Professor John Connelly Professor Victoria Bonnell Fall 2013 Exclave: Politics, Ideology, and Everyday Life in Königsberg–Kaliningrad, 1928-1948 © 2013 By Nicole M. Eaton 1 Abstract Exclave: Politics, Ideology, and Everyday Life in Königsberg-Kaliningrad, 1928-1948 by Nicole M. Eaton Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Yuri Slezkine, Chair “Exclave: Politics, Ideology, and Everyday Life in Königsberg-Kaliningrad, 1928-1948,” looks at the history of one city in both Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Russia, follow- ing the transformation of Königsberg from an East Prussian city into a Nazi German city, its destruction in the war, and its postwar rebirth as the Soviet Russian city of Kaliningrad. The city is peculiar in the history of Europe as a double exclave, first separated from Germany by the Polish Corridor, later separated from the mainland of Soviet Russia. The dissertation analyzes the ways in which each regime tried to transform the city and its inhabitants, fo- cusing on Nazi and Soviet attempts to reconfigure urban space (the physical and symbolic landscape of the city, its public areas, markets, streets, and buildings); refashion the body (through work, leisure, nutrition, and healthcare); and reconstitute the mind (through vari- ous forms of education and propaganda). Between these two urban revolutions, it tells the story of the violent encounter between them in the spring of 1945: one of the largest offen- sives of the Second World War, one of the greatest civilian exoduses in human history, and one of the most violent encounters between the Soviet army and a civilian population.